


Crossroads

by TalaRae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 11:57:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20600405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalaRae/pseuds/TalaRae
Summary: Supreme Leader Kylo Ren unwillingly receives a mysterious visitor, and is given a choice to consider.





	Crossroads

By the end of the first hour of Gamma shift, the usual quiet of "night" as it exists on a star destoyer has descended over the Finalizer. This deep into the heart of the ship, with sound-proofing built into the walls, even the thrum of the engines cannot be heard in the Supreme Leaders private chambers. 

And yet Kylo Ren stands in front of his bed, awake and alert far beyond when his body needed rest, despite what he tells himself. 

In the months since taking command, since Rey - _since the scavenger_ \- turned on him he thinks bitterly to himself, lips twisting in displeasure, he has felt nothing close to rest or to peace. No amount of meditation or calling upon the Force to guide him has helped. When he sleeps, it is not restful. He does not dream - has not dreamed in many years. 

The anger that fuels him is alive and burning in his chest, white-hot and pulsing. Here he stands when he should be resting. But can he even justify resting when there is so much to do still, so much time being wasted on General Hux's precious "restructuring" and "centralization" of their fleet and forces? In reality though, he can do nothing to help. The officers do not look to him to lead them - it is Hux they respect, not him, and he knows it. 

Quietly and quite against his will, he hears his mother's voice in his mind from his youth. _"...Lie still and take deep breaths, Ben. Pretend you're in Uncle Luke's X-wing, and count the stars through the canopy..." _

Thoughts of his mother only agitate him further, and he clenches his fist as if to threaten his memories into submission like he does to so many in the First Order. 

Eyes closed, fist shaking, he feels that anger manifesting in the Force, the threat of violence electric and real and it seems that this part of his quarters will be thoroughly thrashed before long - 

And then he hears the soft laughter in the back of his mind, and feels the unmistakable presence of the Force filling the room around him. 

He opens his eyes and quickly surveys the room, not trusting anyone or anything to not seek to bring him down and end his reign over the First Order. There is nothing behind him, or to the left where the door leads to his wardrobe, or to the right, where another door leads to the 'fresher. But when he turns to face forward again, he is startled by the sudden appearance of a robed and hooded figure leaning against the doorway that leads back into the drawing room of his living quarters. 

"Declare yourself and put your hands up now!" he growls, casting his right hand outwards and summoning his saber hilt without a glance - 

Or at least, he tries to. 

The weapon never reaches his hand, instead lazily drifting towards the hooded figure, who has not even lifted a finger. 

"You must be quite fearsome in battle." the intruder - male, from the timbre of his voice, amusement clear in it - inclines his head slightly to regard the still-hovering hilt beside his head, his face still completely covered from the Supreme Leader's vantage. 

In response, Kylo Ren snarls and moves his right hand, intending instead to choke the life out of this intruder with the Force - 

And he stops dead in his motion a moment later, feeling an all-too-familiar constriction of his own throat, and feels his breath go shallow. Stunned into stillness, Kylo Ren reaches up a hand to his throat in disbelief, and feels the raw energy of the Force envelop him in total. 

The intruder shakes his head slowly, and raises a hand himself. The Supreme Leader feels a rush of things at once - rage at the forefront, and curiosity at how there could be a more powerful Force user than him, and how he could not sense him on his ship! - and is suddenly bound tightly in what feels like ropes, invisible but all too real. 

"I came only to speak with you. Not to harm you. It is not the will of the Force to do you harm tonight." the figure makes a little gesture with his hand, a little wave almost, and Kylo Ren can do nothing but thrash against his Force bonds as he is sat on the edge of his bed like an unruly child, near frothing with anger. 

"Who - and what - are you?" Kylo Ren bites out, his natural curiosity - _the Solo in him, he hears his Uncle say in a memory with a laugh as Luke elbows his father in the ribs_ \- at the strangeness of this situation winning out over his anger at the moment, since he cannot seem to break his bonds. 

"An agent of the living Force, just like you were supposed to be." 

The figure takes only a slight step forward, and a soft, pale glow seems to envelop his tall form. Unable to push his old troublesome memories away, Kylo Ren recalls hearing about former Jedi masters who came back from beyond to deliver messages. 

"I AM an agent of the Force. It moves through me, and through me its power is holding the galaxy together. I don't know who you were in life, but this little Jedi trick will not hold me forever - " 

The figure clenches his fist a bit, and the Supreme Leader must focus more on breathing than on speaking now. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much for someone with so little to say? " the intruder seems amused as he folds his arms over his chest, and leans back against the doorway again in a way that looks familiar to Kylo Ren, if only he could place WHY -  
"Now that I have your attention AND your silence, I can deliver the message I came to give." There is a long pause as the figure regards his captive, as if mulling his words carefully. 

"You think that you've fully embraced the dark side. But there is conflict in your heart and you know it. Not just from the Jedi girl. From your mother. From the fear that perhaps you were wrong in turning to the dark side - don't look at me so indignantly, Ben Solo. You can lie to yourself but you cannot lie to the Force." 

At the sound of his old, discarded name, Kylo Ren - _Ben_ \- stops his thrashing at last, and feels the unfortunate truth of this stranger's words. He _has_ been plagued with that gnawing doubt, the affection he still feels for his mother despite her betrayals...Throat still too tightly held to waste effort on speech, he sits and gives a petulant glare up at this Force ghost who came to annoy him this night. 

The figure continues. "The reason you can't rest is because you know that there is no balance in the Force, and definitely not in YOU. Rey offered you a chance to turn your life back to its intended path and you turned it down. But it is not too late for you." 

Ben scoffs at that, knowing it is far too late to turn from his path now, if he is to succeed in bringing the galaxy at large back to peace, and righting the wrongs that were done to him, getting revenge for the lies that he was fed, from the neglect - 

"...I was just like you. The same struggle you're having. The idea that you're doing the right thing, that your family has betrayed you, didn't care about you like they promised they did, didn't really love you...But they do. They do and I learned that lesson too late." 

The captive Supreme Leader gathers his breath enough to ask "Who are you?" before gasping and lapsing back into silence. His captor makes a gesture again with his hand, and the constriction around Ben's throat is gone. 

"Someone who wants to stop you from walking the exact same path I did, before it is too late. You already lost your father to your own hand, just as I lost my aunt. My own daughter was not enough to turn me away from what I thought was right. Because I was unable to control my emotions. My fear. My anger. All the things that lead to the dark side. And ultimately...it cost me everything I ever wanted. None of it was worth what my family went through because of me. But at the very end...I was able to ensure that my love and my little girl survived. And my sister...I could have taken her with me in my anger. I let her strike me down instead. Peace DID come - with my death." 

Ben regards the man in front of him, and a small voice in him that he has tried to shut away and destroy is begging him to listen, begging him to ask this mysterious...Sith he supposes...to ask him to tell everything, to explain why and how the Force has sent him here, how he was able to discern what the Force willed, when the Force seemed to tell him NOTHING any longer. 

The intruder seems to read his thoughts, or at least understand the sense of him, as he quietly speaks again. 

"The Force granted me the chance to atone for my mistakes by letting me speak to you. Whether you take the gift it is giving you through me is your choice. But know that your mother loves you, and truly believes in redemption - as does Rey. As does Dameron in some way. You still have family to return to. You cannot feel the will of the Force because you have forgotten that YOU serve the Force - the Force does not serve YOU." 

As if a fog has been lifted, Ben feels something in the Force calling out to him for the first time in a long time. It seems to wrap itself around him, a power thrumming in his blood that he hasn't felt since he was young, meditating with his Uncle, as his Jedi Master urged him to reach out and feel the way that the Force bound all living things. Without realizing it, he is free of his bonds, and standing, and his face is wet and warm. 

The intruder tilts his head back enough for Ben to see a familiar looking smile curling on full lips beneath the hood. 

"Didn't think you would get so emotional on me. How very un-Solo like of you." 

Ben wipes at the trails of tears on his cheeks in annoyance but feels none of the usual rage filling to the brim within him - it is as if that boiling anger has been cooled down to a mild simmer, and for the first time in he doesn't know how long, he can control it. 

"Rest, Ben. Rest, and think. Your path is not going to be easy by any means, no matter what you choose. But you have a _choice_. Please do not make my mistakes again. If the Force is willing, maybe it will let us speak again someday soon." 

The figure turns to the doorway as if to leave like a real person and not an apparition of the Force, and Ben asks once again "Who are you?", but in a tone much softer than he would have though himself capable. 

There's another pause, a slight hesitation, and the mysterious intruder turns again, and pulls back his hood. Dark eyes flecked with gold meet Ben's own - a holdover from the powers of the Dark Side he must have tapped into. His hair is somewhat long and messy, falling around his still-youthful face and framing a familiar jaw line, and it is not until he smirks that Ben can place it - this stranger looks distressingly like his father in his youth.

"My name is Jacen. Jacen Solo."

**Author's Note:**

> I am still so rusty at my writing (depression is a bitch!) but I do hope you've enjoyed. I may add another chapter to this if I get that creative bug again, but for now I hope it is satisfying on its own. Thank you so much for reading! -T.R.


End file.
